Licensing is an important part of software. Licensing protects the owner of the software from unauthorized use without remuneration. In addition, licensing protects the customer for the software from potential lawsuits because of license misuse. Typically, the license for software is validated at the time of installation and/or execution.
Also, with regard to software, upgrades to hardware may not always keep pace with upgrades to software and vice versa. Customers may upgrade their hardware at a rate that may outpace the upgrades to their software. Accordingly, customers may attempt to transfer their software on existing hardware to their upgraded hardware. However, allowing the ability to transfer must be weighed against massive distribution of a single copy of the software across a number of different machines.